Speak No Evil
by Taisi
Summary: It's less than a week after the incident with those punk frogs that Raph realizes the ramifications of cruel words. (2k12, "The Croaking" tag, twoshot.)
1. Part 1

Mikey's doing cartwheels that become handsprings after training some early morning, just easy, lazy flips and turns while the rest of them cool off, and Casey and Donnie start in on each other again. It's over something stupid, as usual, so Raph rolls his eyes and tunes them out, helping Leo stretch his right leg.

Then out of nowhere April shouts, and Raph and Leo whip around in time to see the rest of their family go down in an impressive tangle of limbs. It would have been funny, except April's _furious._

"Oh, way to go, guys!" their kunoichi snaps, yanking Casey one way and shoving Donnie another, creating room for Mikey to roll free of them. Once he does, he doubles over on his knees with his forehead braced in the grass, cradling an arm against his plastron- utterly silent in a way that tells Raph better than any doctor could that he's hurt.

Leonardo's there in a heartbeat even with a stiff knee, a hand on Mikey's shoulder to ease him upright, and it takes some gentle coaxing on big brother's part for Mikey to surrender his guarded arm. The reveal of his wrist- already swelling and colored- is enough in itself to make Raph need to hit something immediately.

"What happened?" he asks instead, sharply, and April scowls.

"_These two _weren't watching where they were fighting and got in Mikey's way as he was coming down on his hands. It looked like he rolled his wrist."

"Mikey I'm so sorry," Donnie blurts, at the same time a shame-faced Casey mutters, "Sorry, little dude," and Mikey winces through a smile.

"Aww, no big," is what he says, even as he curls his arm back against his center the moment Leo lets it go. "It was an accident! I'll go put ice on it or whatever."

"I'll come help," Leo's quick to offer and Mikey waves it down.

"Thanks, bro, but you should probably stay and finish up out here. You gotta stretch properly, you're still getting better. I'll just ask Kitty to lay on my wrist- she'll think it's fun!" Leo hesitates, and Raph and April must look similarly disinclined, because Mikey makes a face at them. "It's just a sprain! Come on, guys, we've _all_ had one before."

But there's something intensely personal about Mikey getting hurt in the athletics that come as naturally to him as breathing; Raph hasn't seen him scratch a landing like that since they were chubby little toddlers. It would probably feel about as miserable as Raph cutting himself on the sideguard of one of his sais.

"April, will you stay here and help Leo? I'll head in with Mikey," he says. April nods, and Mikey frowns, brow wrinkled under the bright orange of his mask, prompting Raph to add, "_Just _to make sure it's not broken."

"Well... make sure you keep it elevated," Leo concedes reluctantly, looking more like a mother hen than it's safe to admit out loud. Raphael heaves a long-suffering sigh as he shoves Mikey along in front of him that's more for Mikey's sake than anyone else's.

"Yes, mom."

Once Ice Cream Kitty is settled in her bowl on the table, and Mikey's planted in the chair in front of her, under oath he won't move an inch, Raph goes to the laundry room in search of a dishtowel or something he can wrap some ice up, since the cold compress has up and vanished. He's making his way back when he overhears Mikey talking to his cat, and it's the bleak undertone to his voice Raph's never heard from him before that leads him to pause in the hall a few steps from the kitchen.

"I'm okay, I just hurt my wrist cause I landed on it wrong. Jeez, I can't believe I messed up a flip. Some ninja, huh, kitty?" Mikey's murmuring, and Raph's eyes widen- there's an echo of himself there, in his baby brother's quiet deprecation, and it sinks through his chest like a stone.

_No- wait a minute- _

On the other side of the wall, Mikey sighs.

"Maybe I really am worthless."


	2. Part 2

"Raph?"

Raph blinks. He's standing silently in the hall with probably a stupid look on his face, and no clue how long he's been there, and Mikey's leaning through the kitchen doorway to stare at him.

"You okay, bro?"

_You're not worthless, _is the only answer that comes to mind, the only words Raph can remember out of the entire English language at the moment, but even they get stuck somewhere between his brain and his mouth and he ends up not answering at all.

"Hey, do you need to sit down? You look kinda... pukey."

Mikey reaches for him like he's about to guide him to a chair, and that little gesture- one hand outstretched while the other remains tucked against his plastron- is enough to resurrect Raphael's voice.

"Didn't I tell you not to move?" he says gruffly, and it comes out a little sharper than he meant. Mikey rolls his eyes.

"You _also _said you'd BRB but I found you out here in La La Land."

"I didn't say BRB." Raph steers Mikey by the shoulders back into the kitchen and desposits him in his chair. Ice Cream Kitty has her eyes on him, and he's pretty sure he's not imagining the way she starts to glare. Sure enough, once he's back with ice and presses the makeshift compress over Mikey's wrist, Mikey hisses at the cold, and his cat hisses, too.

"Kitty!" Mikey admonishes, tugging her bowl to the far side of the table when she takes an icy swipe at his brother. "What's gotten into you?"

She growls in the back of her throat, leaning her head down to rest her chin on Mikey's fingers where they curve over the rim of her bowl. Raph's got a pretty good idea why she's angry with him, and shakes his head at Mikey's nervous glance and muttered 'sorry.'

"Nah. I think I deserve that much, little brother."

Mikey isn't worthless.

He's the one who sensed a wolf in sheep's clothing- or the monster in Mrs. O'Neil's- even when it had the rest of his family fooled, and he's the one who survived an alien world for months on his own. Mikey saved Raph the night they lost their father, when Raph almost lost himself in turn to grief and rage. _Mikey _sees all the kinks in his brothers' mental armor, _Mikey _protects them in a way swords and sais can't.

But Mikey doesn't protect himself as much. Mikey's _cat _is the one defending him against hurt right now- against the brother that hurt him- and he's sitting there with a confused look on his face, like he can't think of a single thing in the world that Raph's done wrong.

Raph moves the icepack back over Mikey's wrist when it starts to slip, and then cups Mikey's face in hand, meeting round blue eyes bravely.

Michelangelo is the most annoying guy on the _planet_. Raph will be the first one to say it. Mikey's practically the posterboy for Atypical Ninja, obnoxious, and cheerful, and loud, and _not _as funny as he thinks he is. He's everything that gets on Raph's nerves, he's everything Raph_ isn't, _and he's everything Raph will fight tooth and nail to keep safe.

It's a little brother thing.

And his little brother ran away from home because Raph lost his temper over a messy room. The thought freezes his heart, and his fingers on Mikey's chin tighten.

"Oww, Raph, what're you- "

"You're not worthless." Mikey blinks at him again, mouth still hanging open where Raph cut him off mid-word, and Raph doesn't let go. His brother _ran away_ because of him, and that can't ever happen again, not ever. "I owe you an apology for the stuff I said, big time. It's been rough on all of us out here, not just me, and I had no business cuttin' into you like I did. And I'm sorry, Mikey."

It's frank, and honest, and Mikey looks like he has no idea what to do with it. "Hey, Raph, it's- "

"It'll take longer than this one conversation to fix the way I've been makin' you think lately," Raph says over him, relentlessly. "I know that. But I'm gonna fix it, okay? And I'm starting here." He frees Mikey's chin to hook the back of his head instead, guiding him forward until red and orange meet where their foreheads come to rest together and there's nowhere in the world for Mikey to look except right at Raph, and all the bare sincerity in his eyes. "Okay, Mikey?"

It seems like forever- even though it can't really be more than a minute- but finally that ice cream cat starts purring up a storm at about the same time Mikey's free arm slips around Raph in turn, and Raph can _hear _the smile in his baby brother's voice when he says,

"Okay."


End file.
